Gorbachev Reassures The World Loss Of Shevardnadze Won`t Prompt Changes

December 22, 1990|The New York Times

MOSCOW -- President Mikhail Gorbachev on Friday sought to calm the aftershocks of his foreign minister`s resignation, discounting fears that the event was a precursor of changes in the country`s internal and foreign policies.

But critics among the democratic insurgents seized on Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze`s resignation as evidence that the country is inexorably sliding toward tyranny, and that Gorbachev is going along with it.

In an attempt to pacify Western governments and stock markets, unsettled by concerns that Shevardnadze`s departure could mean a shift in foreign policy, a presidential spokesman said Gorbachev met for more than two hours with the foreign minister to discuss arms control and other business.

Presidential aides circulated at the Congress of People`s Deputies to emphasize that the resignation reflected no differences on policy, and that there would be no change of course on such issues as Moscow`s participation in the campaign of pressure against Iraq.

The presidential spokesman, Vitaly Ignatenko, said Shevardnadze was offered no new government post. Another top official said that he did not expect Shevardnadze to end up with a prominent position because of Gorbachev`s visible sense of betrayal at the resignation.

Ignatenko described the meeting as businesslike -- a neutral adjective that did nothing to dispel the impression of a chill between the two longtime friends.

Meanwhile, the sense of unraveling that sometimes seems a permanent condition was aggravated by new tensions in three non-Russian republics, any of which could become a testing ground for Gorbachev`s tougher line on ethnic disorder.

In Lithuania, which is trying to secure its claim of independence, armed soldiers patrolled the port of Klaipeda with special powers from the local military commandant to stop, search and arrest citizens, the Soviet press agency Tass reported.

The military said the special regimen was introduced after someone threw a bag with explosives over the fence of a military garrison and tried to penetrate the military guard surrounding a monument to Lenin.

Lithuanian officials charged that the troop patrols in Klaipeda, a city of 200,000, presaged a wider crackdown on the republic`s aspirations of independence.

Shevardnadze`s native republic, Georgia, now in the hands of a separatist government, announced the creation of its own national guard in place of the Interior Ministry police forces supervised from Moscow.

On Dec. 1, after several other republics moved to establish their own armed units, Gorbachev issued a decree declaring them illegal. The move by Georgia on Friday was the first test of the new, hard-line leadership installed three weeks ago at the national Interior Ministry.

In the western Ukraine, soldiers from different ethnic groups exchanged fire for several hours on Thursday night, leaving 21 wounded, Tass said.

The report said that the brawl involved soldiers of the Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chechen, Uzbek and Turkmen ethnic groups, who ran riot at a railway battalion in the city of Chop.

``Local arms depots, an arsenal and a guardhouse were attacked`` before guards ended the conflict by firing at the legs of combatants, Tass said.

In Moscow, Soviet officials declined to speculate on Friday about a successor to Shevardnadze.

One man regarded as a leading candidate, Yevgeny Primakov, Gorbachev`s special envoy on the Persian Gulf crisis, said on Friday that he did not think he would be offered the job.

Primakov confirmed that he had ``tactical disagreements`` with Shevardnadze on the Gulf issue.

Primakov pushed for greater emphasis on negotiations with Baghdad, while Shevardnadze was quicker to support a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force to end Iraq`s occupation of Kuwait.

Primakov`s candidacy to head the Foreign Ministry was thought to have been damaged by his last peace mission to Iraq, which failed to produce any progress toward a settlement.

At the Congress of People`s Deputies, the country`s Parliament, Shevardnadze`s forecast of impending dictatorship seemed to shake liberals.

A liberal opposition faction, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, issued a statement calling for unity in the fractious Parliament to prevent the rise of a dictatorship.

But there was no sign yet that rivals had narrowed their differences on the divisive issues of the day -- the balance of powers between Moscow and the republics, the pace of free-market economic reforms, and Gorbachev`s leadership.

Many legislators said that with Shevardnadze gone, the danger was increased that Gorbachev would be isolated and at the mercy of hardliners in the military, the KGB and the Communist Party.